Only Insurance.com - Insurance Company Bupa Buys Cromwell Hospital

Health Insurance - Insurance Company Bupa Buys Cromwell Hospital - 17/03/2008

Health Insurance Company Bupa has bought Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, West London.

The deal, agreed between Bupa and Belfast-based Ballyrogan Holdings, valued the hospital at more than ninety million pounds.

Bupa said it will invest a further thirty million pounds in the 128-bed hospital to create a centre of excellence for private patients over the next three years.

Bupa’s Managing Director, Fergus Kee said the health insurance company originally entered the private hospital market because of a shortage of private beds in the 1970s. But this is no longer the case outside London, he said.

He added that before this opportunity came, for many years Bupa had been looking for the chance to have a flagship hospital in London. Ballyrogan Holdings, a private company owned by two leading entrepreneurs in Northern Ireland, Shamus and Francis Jennings, issued a statement saying they sold the hospital in order to concentrate on other business interests.

They are involved in urban regeneration and property development company Cusp, which has a property portfolio worth more than five hundred pounds and Culzean Holdinggs, a joint venture company formed to develop branded hotels throughout Ireland.

The hospital is well-known for its pioneering of state-of-the-art medical equipment and cancer services. It also has specific expertise in neuroscience and paediatrics.

It has about six hundred practising consultants covering over 70 different specialities. They are mainly drawn from teaching hospitals. Cromwell admits self-pay and embassy sponsored patients as well as those funded by medical insurance. Its outpatient services include private GPs, health screening and a walk-in family medicine and diagnostic centre.